The story
Antonello da Messina, the Sicilian painter who took up oil painting in the Flemish manner, painted Christ crowned with thorns and bound with a rope more than once. The version in Piacenza is a small oil on panel, signed and dated 1473, and it is the most prized picture in a place that is primarily something other than a museum.
The Collegio Alberoni is a seminary for training priests, and it still is. Its founder, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, was a gardener's son from Piacenza who rose to be chief minister to King Philip V of Spain. In 1730 he was put in charge of San Lazzaro, a medieval leper hospital outside the city that had fallen into disorder, and with the pope's consent he replaced it with a college to educate 70 poor boys for the priesthood. Building began in 1732, and the college opened in 1751, a year before his death.
The cardinal left it his collection. Visitors see his apartment and gallery, with Flemish paintings including works by Jan Provost, pictures by Guido Reni and Luca Giordano, and 18 tapestries from the 16th and 17th centuries. The college also keeps a monumental library and its own astronomical, weather and earthquake observatories.
